For ECER 2022 I intend to address the conference theme by delving into the research I presented at ECER 2021 (Gobbo 2021), in which the issues of social, cultural and political changes in Europe related to migration, and the construction of positive intercultural encounters, were approached through ethnography, whose intercultural quality I have often underlined (Gobbo 2012a, 2011, 2008, 2007, 2005, 2004a, 2004b, 2000). By developing my participant observation of Z. (the Albanian immigrant, now Italian citizen) at work, and reflecting on his narrative I had collected, I will propose an interpretation of the specific educational path tread by Z. in terms of situated learning theory, or apprenticeship and co-participation (Lave, Wenger 1991; Lave 2011). In my presentation I will focus on Z.’s experience of learning within a local community of practice, namely the team of dairy workers and experts in making “mozzarella campana”. In his position as an apprentice, or legitimate peripheral participant, he learned by watching, or as he himself said “by stealing with my smart eyes”, the way the local cheese was produced. A successful learner, he later on migrated to the North East of Italy, where he was asked to pass such craft practice to a local aspiring candidate, a task he carried out by having the latter – as a legitimate peripheral participant - learn by first watching him during a few months, and then making him practice (under Z.’s supervision) the learning he had achieved. My participant observation and the collection of Z.’s narrative make me argue that his educational experience can also be effectively represented as a form of intercultural encounter, while the competence reached and shared by Z. contributes to the social and cultural changes characterizing a world of great cultural plurality (Bauman 1999, Hannerz 1992).

With regard to my ethnographic engagement in observing Z.’s practice, as well as in listening, collecting, arranging and translating his narrative, I will reflect on it in terms of this research tradition as learning (Lave 2011), as a “study with people” (Ingold 2007), and as “an education” that we participant observers undergo in the field (Ingold 2014), and that “cannot be pursued without the intervention of others … from whom, and with whom, we learn” (Gobbo 2008).

The methodology combined participant observation of Z.’s craft practice, as well as the collection of his narrative (Denzin 1989, Scheffler 1991, Kohler Riesmann 1993, Linde 1993, Van Maanen1995, Josselson, Lieblich eds. 1995, Clough 2002, Kearney 2003, Bold 2012) - an engagement that entailed my listening and asking questions, capturing the different feelings that colored his voice and sentences, transcribing the latter and eventually interpreting them as the situated learning (Lave, Wenger 1991) Z. experienced, gaining a firm professional/personal identity, and eventually translating the resulting story into English, which required attention to his technical vocabulary. Participant observation is here understood and proposed “as learning” (Lave 2011), as “a study with people” and a form of “education” (Ingold 2007, 2014).

Participant observation and narrative are relevant for intercultural education as they both give voice to the researcher’s interlocutors and bring into focus how they understand themselves, interpret their life, or the critical or decisive experiences they underwent, express their current or future projects, and are a tense learning experience for the researcher herself.

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